Tesla

This post is purely speculative full of wishful-thinking.

Compare Tesla's 2014 Annual Report:

"We are developing the Tesla Gigafactory as a facility where we work together with our suppliers to integrate battery precursor material, cell, module and battery pack production in one location." (Page 11)

With Tesla's 2015 Annual Report:

"We are developing the Gigafactory as a facility where we work together with our suppliers to integrate battery material, cell, module and battery pack production in one location." (Page 9)

Note that in the 2015 annual report, the word precursor has been omitted from the identical statement. This could be significant because it may signal a change in Tesla's Gigafactory strategy due to cost/time overruns (i.e. Tesla may have bitten off more than they can chew). It may get Panasonic and others to supply the precursor materials initally whilst still assembling those materials, the cell, module and battery pack at the Gigafactory:




(Source - Yellow writing was added by me)

If this wild speculation proves correct, it would explain why there haven't been more lithium/cobalt/graphite offtake agreements announced by Tesla. Considering that the Model 3 will be unveiled on March 31st and that they're aiming to sell 500,000 per year, it has been a complete shock to me that more announcements aren't being made about securing the raw materials (aka precursor materials) that they'll require.

What could this mean for Kibaran?

Our Sojitz MOU says that we'll be negotiating "...long term sales into Japanese and Korean battery anode manufacturers." Panasonic is a Japanese battery anode manufacturer.

It's possible that through Sojitz we may be supplying Panasonic and hence Tesla.

Again, this is highly speculative and it makes the assumption that Tesla will use natural graphite in its Model 3 to lower costs. Having said that, who else at the moment would be demanding 200 tonnes of our graphite for lithium-ion battery production-scale tests? Can you count them on more than one hand?